7.6.09

The player is briefed on an assassination mission their band of Elvish mercenaries will be carrying out. Your target is a duke of one of the major human kingdoms. The city is a laid out as a spiral with four major roads acting as arms to protect against invaders, and four walls that extend between the four arms are to prevent cutting through the back roads to avoid the spiral.

Th op is laid out in two teams, your team will be infiltrating from the East, while the other team is infiltrating from the West. The Western team will be setting fire to a major store house to draw as many guards as possible away from the keep at the center of the town. Your team is to carry out the actual assassination.

The level begins with the player and their team, all dressed in dark clothes with hoods on top of a cliff face overlooking the walls which are some thirty yards away. The player has a bow, and dual long knives as their starting equipment. The player is tasked with sniping one of the guards, who is holding a torch against the coming dark of twilight. Once the guard is dead, another team member shoots an arrow with rope attached over the wall. The team begins to shimmy across the rope, leaving one behind to keep watch. As the players are most of the way across a patrol of three guards walks into the dead guard's post. They notice the dead guard and spread out. The player can try and watch all three guards and notice the guards at the back getting picked off, or can just watch the one directly approaching the rope's attachment point who takes an arrow in the throat just as he's about to raise the alarm.

Once across, the team waits for it's final member before dropping a rope to repel down into an alley below. This time two are left behind to secure their position on the wall. The other six proceed down the alleyways, assassinating guards from the shadows and avoiding busy taverns until they reach the main road. There the player looses control as they move to the edge of the alleyway and wait a few seconds. Off to the west, the sky lights up as a major fire is obviously underway, a loud cry is off down the other end of the street and the majority of the guards run off towards the keep. Someone mentions that from now on, the guards can no longer call for back up, making it safe to take the road. The player regains control with the main road in front of them, the wrong direction is blocked by wagons, and the side streets on the other side of the road provide an area where the player can continue stealth game play while working in the correct direction.

When the players exit in front of the keep, the portcullis is down, and a few troops are exiting the doors on either side. Once the player has handled the troops, they will be tasked with going up through one of the doors, both lead to the same place, and finding a way into the gate room. Once at the top, the player finds an area where the ceiling has caved in somewhat, allowing them to climb up, and out, then drop onto the guard walk and enter the gate house. Once the guards in the gate house are dead, the player will turn the wheel in the center to raise the portcullis and allow their team in. The team infiltrates from the servants entrance, giving the player the moral choice of killing the civilian help or not. No civilians will raise an alarm unless actively attacked, instead they'll cower and hide, making it purely a player choice.

The player can approach the halls as a stealth segment, and will get an XP bonus for not raising the alarm and an additional bonus for not killing over half the guards. Once in front of the feast hall, the Duke will burst out of the door in front of the player, giving a small group of soldiers messages to take to his commanders. The team has a small skirmish, killing the Duke and his aids and the objective is changed to safely exiting the mission. The players can hear guards calling that the town is under attack as they head for the gate. Once outside the keep, in the main square of the city, chaos has broken out down the three major roads they can see down, as the humans are fighting an unknown second faction. A large boulder strikes the keep, causing one of the towers to fall blocking off the two main streets. Players proceed down the third street until it dead ends in flaming debris, one of your team recommends taking to the rooftops. You do so, and back track to the keep, where you cross using the debris from the tower to the next set of rooftops and take those back to where your team is holding the walls. When you arrive at the wall, you can see your team members outnumbered with two groups of six approaching them from either side.

You're team members begin supporting them with arrows from the street. Once it's safe on the wall, your team climbs back up. The two that were left behind quickly update you on what they've been seeing while someone lowers a rope down the other side of the wall. You are the second to take the rope, and as soon as you begin repelling the level ends.